PREMISE
Bella Baxter, a young woman who, after being crudely resurrected by a scientist following her suicide, runs off with a debauched lawyer to embark on an odyssey of self-discovery and sexual liberation.
THE GOOD STUFF
STONE- Emma Stone is always been funnier than she is anything else. Her breakout role was a comedy and her best films have also been comedies. (CRAZY STUPID LOVE, ZOMBIELAND, EASY A, BIRDMAN) POOR THINGS proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that physical comedy is something she can do just as well as any other form of the genre. Stone is an actress who should do a lot more comedies even though she’s obviously well-rounded and can do anything she wants very well.
She’s unbelievably hilarious in this movie. The best actress competition for the Oscar is very heavy this year, but she’s easily in the mix for all of it.
THE LAWYER- Also assured of an Oscar nomination is Mark Ruffalo. I wouldn’t go as far as to call this a career-best of his or anything like that, but it’s very close. This is one of the more effective comedic turns of 2023 and he’s rather unhinged in a very cartoonish sort of a way. A lot of the effectiveness of what’s going on here with Ruffalo has to do with the fact that it’s him playing the role. Anyone familiar with him knows that his range goes far far beyond the MCU. But we do rarely see it go this far. He is a joy to watch in this movie.
SCREENPLAY- It’s actually kind of incredible how many particular things the story touches on all while maintaining a comedic sensibility throughout and never really getting preachy about anything. It’s also incredible how the dialogue carries a scene even when the pace of the film slows way down. That happens often, but it never stops being interesting, and the interactions with all of the characters are always funny.
THE BAD STUFF
THE SEX STUFF- Maybe this is an ice-cold take, but in the year of 2023 I’ve kind of lost all sense of purpose on why sex scenes exist the way they do in cinema. What exactly is the service of a sex scene besides titillating the audience? It’s not like anything important is spoken during the intercourse choreography, outside of the occasional comedy that’s telling jokes all throughout the intercourse. (Like in FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, TRAINWRECK, or BRIDESMAIDS) When sex is treated seriously in a film, there is never any particular action in the movie leading up to say, an important plot element that can only be displayed during sexual intercourse between two characters. I do understand the usage of nudity in some cases, but full-blown sex scenes that are treated seriously are egregious almost 100% of the time.
Though POOR THINGS is in fact a comedy, the sex is always treated with seriousness. I wanna say there are like…. 10 minutes worth of sex scenes here in this 140-minute film. I promise you, I’m no prude… But I don’t understand why any of it needs to be there.
THE FINAL 15 MINUTES- Of course, we’re not here to spoil things, but the final 15 of this movie is unbelievably weak and deals with a problem that the movie doesn’t build up to really in any way outside of its opening scene. Though the ending does make sense, it is kind of underwhelming especially when considering Ruffalo’s character.
THE UGLY STUFF
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As I mentioned in my review of THE HOLDOVERS, I’ve always come to appreciate when a movie star and a director have what I like to call “peanut butter and jelly vibes”. The vibes occur when the director and star are so simpatico in everything they do that you can just tell that the work that any of the films they will do together will be perhaps more poignant than the films that they do apart from one another. Actor/director combinations such as Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti, Kirsten Dunst and Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson, and Bill Murray, and Tim Burton and Johnny Depp among many, many others have the vibes. They are ideal artistic muses, perfect artistic vessels to emphasize the cinematic vision that they share.
Well, poor things proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that there may not be one performer on this planet who can accompany the visual stylings of a director like Yorgos Lanthimos better than Emma Stone. Poor things is the definitive collaboration between the two and should be the collaboration they are most remembered for. It’s an easy choice for a top 10 film of the year.
POOR THINGS is limited in theaters now and will release wide on December 22nd
